| Summary: | (8:44) Mr. Allen tells about buying a car, dating and building his own house.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Willie Allen
October 31, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Rhonda Haygood and Patti Hannah
(Also present are: His wife, Geneva Allen
and two of his daughters,
Benita Logsdon and Sherry Allen)
Clip 5
Rhonda Haygood: Well, you mentioned buying a truck. What was your, the first vehicle you got and how did you learn to drive it?
Willie Allen: Well, now my daddy bought a 1936 Chevrolet. That’s what I learned to drive in. That was back when I was about, I learn to drive when I was about eleven or twelve years old. I learned to drive that old Chevrolet. When I went to Ohio when I was eighteen I worked up there, when I got nineteen I bought a car up there. A 1941 Pontiac. Well this was in ’53 when I was, bought that Pontiac. I gave $175 for it. I went up there and I paid the man half of it this week and next week I went back and paid the rest of it and I got my car. So, I wanted a better car. It was a pretty good car but it was a big four door black Pontiac. And when I was nineteen, I got called in the Army service. I left Ohio and went to Montgomery to take the examination for the Army. So I drove that old, that Pontiac home, you know. And, ah, while I was at home I looked around here and I found another car. I found a 1947 Pontiac. It was a nice looking car. I had to finance it but see I wasn’t old enough to finance nothing, so Daddy signed for me to get it and I traded while I was home and went back to Ohio in that 1947 Pontiac. And that’s what I had when I got laid off and I drove it home. Then I traded it for a 1952 Dodge. That’s what I had when I met my wife. It was a ’52 Dodge. So, like I said a while ago, I met her and we got to talking in June in 1955 and we got married in February of 1956. So, it wasn’t no long romance thing. It was kind of quick.
Geneva Allen: It should have been longer.
WA: But, ah—
RH: Well, what, how did you date her? What did y’all do to date, to go out on your,—
WA: Well—
RH: —court?
WA: —we’d go to a movie or that little old cafe down there and sit in there and eat a hamburger and talk, you know that’s about, about all it was, you know.
Benita Logsdon: Tell them about your first date. What you did on your first date. When y’all went out for the first time.
WA: First date?
BL: With Cindy.
WA: Oh! That was when I was trying to get the first date with her. She had a friend named Cin-, we called her Cindy, anyway and, ah, they was such good friends till, ah, I wanted a date with Geneva there and I didn’t know whether she would go on a date with me or not so I got to talking to Cindy, see that was her best friend and got Cindy to kind of vouch for me, you know. And Cindy set it up. The first date we was gonna go together, Cindy and her boyfriend and me and Geneva. And I went and picked up Geneva and Cindy didn’t go. I guess she went somewhere else. Anyway that was our first time out together, just the two of us on a date, you know. But Cindy set it up for me and talked her into it and then—
GA: She tricked me.
WA: ―she didn’t go. But anyway it was, we, we went to a little party up here in this—
GA: Church picnic.
WA: ―church up here.
GA: Church picnic.
WA: They give little parties sometimes at night up there, you know. Sell sandwiches and have a little music and dance and so forth. So that’s where we went on our first date, to that little party.
GA: And ‘up here’ is at what?
WA: Up here at Bailey Springs Church. Right down the road here. This little church you see down here. Course, now that’s not the same building. They’ve tore the old building down and built this new church up here. We didn’t, it wasn’t a lot of excitement in our life like it is—well it was to us then, but you go to a picture show and stop and get a coca-cola or a cone of cream or something and you done had a good night, you know, good night out, you know. We didn’t have to do a lot of dancing and what people do nowadays, you know but that was enjoyment to us, you know just to be together and eat a sandwich and drink a pop or something.
RH: Would it be hard for you, do you think, to go back and live like you did when you were growing up without the electricity and all the conveniences you have, you have now? Would it be hard for you to go back and do that again?
WA: Well, no, I don’t think it would be as hard as you might think. You see when, I built this house, hum, I was about forty-one or two years old I guess. I tried to contract me a house and I never could get enough money so I told my wife, I said, “I’m gonna build my own, build me a house myself.” So she said, “Oh, you know you can’t build no house.”
GA: I’d never seen one you’d built.
WA: When she said that I was gonna build it or die. I started looking at contractors out; after they was done, I got me some books and read up on carpentry and so forth and, but I built this house myself. Took me two years. But I built it so, I got a fireplace here and I got one in the den and I got a heater in the basement and I got a well right out there in my front yard. I said, “Now I’m gonna build me a house where if I don’t have no electricity like it was back then I can still live in my house. So we’ve had a little test on it. Sometimes out here, every time it come up a little cloud the power would go off and everything, so we’ve cooked downstairs on that heater and eat. And, ah, well the water, we never did have to draw no water out of the well. The city put water out here, so we had a hydrant out there. We’d get the water out there, you know. And I finally run the city water into the house and disconnected my well. They said it was contaminated, so we quit using the well. But, no, I don’t think it would be that hard because when I built this house I prepared for living like that again if I had to, see. I got a little experiment with that. I, I built the house in, well I had a house built in Sheffield. East 19th Street. Nineteen sixty what? One? Two?
GA: ’62 I think it was.
WA: I lived over there two years.
GA: ’62 or ’63, I’m not sure.
WA: During that time it was, people was building all electric houses. Oh, I had electric wall heaters, wasn’t no chimney no nothing. It came a tornado and the power was off about a week and there we was in a totally electric house. It got cold after that tornado came through. And it so happened we, my brother had a kerosene heater. And he lived here in Florence; the power wasn’t off over here. So he let me have that kerosene heater and that’s the only heat we had till they got my power back on and that taught me right then that don’t you ever try to live in another house where you can’t build a fire. Well, see back when I was growing up that was all the heat we had was a fireplace and a heater. And we stayed warm. Course some of them old houses were so raggely till you got a great big fireplace like this and you’re standing up there and you’ll warm your front and then you turn around and warm the back and you know air coming in everywhere in the house or the cat could come in if he wanted to and go out when he get—that’s the kind of, just a little ol’ raggely house, you know. But we, we lived okay in it. You keep plenty wood and build a big fire and we stayed warm, you know.
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